


the fields are cut and bleed to red

by irnan



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Psychological Trauma, hopelessly completely AU, preboot fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time they meet, she doesn’t arrest him. The second, third, fourth, sixth and ninth times, she does. The tenth, he brings her coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fields are cut and bleed to red

**Author's Note:**

> Backstories involving the Joker and associated graphic violence/torture; mentions of Jason Todd’s Word Of God-described past as a child prostitute. There’s also a line that (I suddenly realise) could be read as implying that Helena was sexually assaulted by the Joker when a minor.
> 
> References _Casablanca_ , because I thought at first that this fic was going to be _funny_. Takes some liberties with Jason’s characterisation, chiefly by mostly ignoring _Batman & Robin_’s ginger version. Title from Alison Krauss. ETA: OK, I posted this at around one in the morning and that's a _totally valid_ excuse for initially mistyping the title as "turn to red" instead of "bleed to red". *hides*

Sunday night: she’s running through the Bowery like there’s wolves on her heels, keeping her breathing as even as she can, feeling the beginnings of fatigue. Another thirty minutes, and she would’ve been off shift, off the streets, staggering into her apartment and falling into bed. She was never able to emulate her parents in their sleeping patterns: five hours a night, or she’s useless.

Dick used to tease her sometimes. That’s years ago now.

Flash of red up ahead. If he had any sense he’d get rid of the thing and never wear it again.

Of course, the fact that he _is_ wearing it is going to make proving it was him who hacked Marius Barroni’s balls off with a rusted-up machete to the satisfaction of the DA and the courts not a little difficult, even for “Detective Lena Kyle”, currently the rising star of the GCPD. She comes round the corner like a – heh – bat out of hell, clears the fence, kicks off a wall, smashes into him with her whole body.

They drop into a pile of trashcans. Any luck, the noise will draw Quigley, draw their backup.

(Always provided Quigley actually thought to _call_ any. Kid’s got potential, but not much common sense.)

The Red Hood is tall – taller than she is; Helena’s five-eleven, taller than Dick – and he’s built like her Dad, all muscle. He fights like her Dad too. Vicious bastard.

They’re barely six blows in before she’s grinning like a mad thing, sliding easily back into habits seldom practiced since she came here. Kick, block, dodge, aim at his solar plexus, he’s wearing Kevlar under that nice leather jacket. They’re damn well matched.

She loves it.

They break apart, panting. Helena is sure, just positive, that under that hood he’s grinning as hard as she is.

“Nice,” he says. Voice a bit harsh. “Not bad.”

“Make your mind up.”

“Heh.” He chuckles, struggles to get his breath back.

She props her hand on the wall, pants quite openly, watches his booted feet, the sureness of his stance. “Hey. I gotta know. The headgear.”

Noise like a snort. “It’s a fashion statement.”

“Whatever, Lord Helmet.”

He laughs so hard she could saunter over a few steps and put the cuffs on him without any trouble at all. Dad would’ve done it.

Mom would’ve said, Wait. Find out what he wants. Decide if his being in your debt is worth giving it to him.

Helena waits.

The Red Hood straightens up at last, chuckling, rubs his gloved hands together. That might be blood on the leather.

It might be spilled coffee, too. Never assume.

“Hmm?” she says.

“Detective Kyle,” he says. “You know who Barroni is?”

Helena grins. “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Because you don’t know my name, or because you can’t answer my question?”

He’s carrying two guns. She’d feel more sure of herself if she could see his face, but his stance and his tone – he likes to play, but only on his own terms.

Helena can sympathise, but not so much that she’s prepared to give up her own.

“If I say both, will you spell it all out for me?”

“He’s the one running the outfit that’s got your Vice boys tied in knots. The one with the kids. Not averse to, uh, dipping his own wick, either.”

Helena stills. “They fingered O’Shaughnessy for that.”

“O’Shaughnessy! Come off of it. He can’t balance his own chequebook, let alone run a country-wide prostitution ring.”

“Hmm,” says Helena. She drops the flirting, drops the laughter; summons the Huntress, long-unused; puts on a stance she used to hold when she wore the _R_ on her chest. “Have I just made a friend?”

He shrugs. “Never can tell, can you, with these masked weirdoes. Lifelong enmity, or beginning of a beautiful friendship? Tune in next week for our exclusive special!”

Helena flinches. It hits just that bit too close to home, a not-a-joke with more truth in it than he’ll ever know, conjures up the way the Joker’s brains dashed across the concrete wall when she shot him, the echoes of his words: _you killed him your fault all your fault **my** batsy **mine always** your fucking fault **useless – little – bird!**_

He tilts his head.

She says, “I’ll be there.”

He’s gone between one breath and the next: good, damn good, _too_ good. Fight, conversation, promise: less than eight minutes. Maybe less than five even.

Helena Wayne, in her own home universe, never had any brothers but one, and he was so many years older than she that he counted closer to a favourite uncle. But Helena Wayne was never born into this Gotham, and when Dick Grayson laid aside the Robin costume for good he had no baby sister to promise it to; it went to someone else entirely.

Helena grins, catlike. “Major Strausser’s been shot,” she says into the darkness. “Round up the usual suspects.”

*********

He oughta leave Gotham. Jason’s known this since the second he first set foot in the city again after – _after_. He oughta pack his crap and diversify his business interests and set out for brighter, better, greener, cleaner pastures. Any city in the world would do, but this one.

No city in the world would do, but this one. Jason’s a stubborn bastard, he knows this perfectly well, and he’s none-too-fond of giving up the things he loves.

He hasn’t had a whole lot of things to love that he could’ve given up. Most of them are already gone.

Except this city.

“You make it sound like you’re the victim in an abusive relationship,” he tells his white-streaked reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Oh, Gotham, I can’t live without you, even though every second I spend with you sets off my PTSD, and _of course_ it’s not your fault you killed me. I probably deserved it. I know I deserved it. Don’t leave me, sweetheart.”

He died in Ethiopia, half way around the world. What’s that got to do with it? Gotham’s got a long arm and a jealous nature.

How many centuries did she drag Bruce through in order to gather him back to herself? How long has she been waiting for Dick, patient as a spider at the heart of her web, as his love for his family and his sense of duty and honour tangled him ever more tightly in her streets? Cracked open by an earthquake and brings forth Cass; shapes Steph out of dingy small-time-crook-hideouts and the bloody chaos of a gang war. Holds a sheltering hand over a small boy with a camera until he’s old enough to return the favour. Shoots Barbara to stop her running away.

“I oughta leave,” he says again.

Reached across dimensions to hook a claw in Helena Wayne and drag her here. Sometimes Jason wonders: was that because she wanted H, or because she wanted to give him H?

It’s fucked up that he hopes it’s the latter. He knows that, thank you. This one time, he came back from the dead and ever since he’s had some strange ideas about this city and his place in it.

“Of course, even before you died you used to swing off of buildings in short pants to kick evildoers in the face, so I’m not sure the whole dying thing is very relevant here,” says H.

Jason turns. She traces the left arm of his Y-incision, rubs her fingertips over the ridged skin. She has scars in the centre of her palms, stigmata: the Joker drove a blade through each when she was fourteen. Cut the tip of her left little finger off. Cut another scar down her sternum, down between her breasts.

There are other scars, in other places: the whip weals, the burnings. It’s different when you’re a girl, he knows. They threaten you different. They torture you different.

“Remember Barroni?” he says.

“Sure.”

“I was ten the first time he gave me twenty dollars to suck his cock.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said those words – said _anything like_ those words – aloud. (Not too different, not always.) She flattens her hand against his chest and –

they don’t leave.

*********

It was Jase who started calling her H – just that, just ‘aitch’ – because he’s an obnoxious, viciously charming bastard who likes to mark things for his own: he calls Gotham “she” when he thinks she won’t notice, talks about her like other men talk about their ‘crazy’ ex-wives. Dick used to give nicknames, but it was all love – same with her Mom; she was Hellcat for years and years. Dad never did. Dad figured she knew what she was without needing to be reminded of it.

Damian refuses to call her Kyle, or Lena, because neither of those are her true names; she won’t let him use Helena, and it would be inappropriate to refer to his blood sister by their shared last name. There is, then, nothing for it but to adopt Todd’s ridiculous appellation.

It has an added advantage in that Bruce would never find out who it belongs to if Damian ever mentions her in passing. Helena has enough nightmares about her dead parents without being faced with their counterparts in the living, breathing flesh, thank you.

Helena has enough ideas about what Dad would have said about her killing the Joker without hearing any of it in life, even from a phony mock-up of him. (There are some co-dependencies which apparently no change of universe or history will ever truly alter.)

Oh how Jase laughs when she tells him that; laughs and laughs and laughs.

*********

Dead kids again, and it _still_ brings it back. The whole force knows crime scenes with dead kids make Len Kyle throw up behind dumpsters. The whole force knows this has never stopped her solving a case. Once she even beat the Bat to the culprit.

This time Jase holds her hair back and doesn’t watch.

“Thanks,” she says, taking the water bottle off him. “Sorry to’ve dragged you into this.”

He shrugs. They know better than to make plans like they’re normal people, like she’s not a cop and he’s not a mob boss, like they weren’t both Robin, like the Joker never put his filthy hands on either of them.

“What was it?” he asks, eyes far away. She thinks he sees the faces of his childhood friends in the kids they find in junkyards like this, brutalised and mutilated.

H feels as though she retches the words up. “Dinah,” she says. “Baby Di. Dick and Babs’ little girl. He ripped her apart. She was four. I think he made them watch while he did it, before he killed them.”

There’s only two _hes_ between them. This time, Helena means the other one.

“You found ‘em?”

“This was three weeks after Dad’s funeral.”

She sips water and doesn’t look at him. Jase frowns into the distance; at the very beginning, this sort of thing would make his eyes glaze over. H learned to see the snap coming from miles away, the point where Gotham pressed too hard and too heavy on his mind with no notion of her own fierce strength; nothing then would quiet him but violence, or to leave the city altogether. That’s subsided months since. Doesn’t mean he’s feeling too great just now.

“Kyle?” says the Commish.

“Sir. Caucasian female, between six and eight years of age, coroner’s given me broken neck as preliminary cause of death. Bruising consistent with a fall. Probably didn’t die here.”

“They dumped her body in a junkyard on purpose,” says the Commish. “Goddammit.”

“No ID yet. I’ve sent Quigley to start checking missing persons; Zorah and Mitchell are taking the local schools.”

“All right,” says the Commish. “Good.” He looks past her, studies Jase. Jase, who doesn’t flinch, and doesn’t challenge. Helena is proud enough she could kiss him. “Sorry, you’re?”

“Jase,” he says, voice too deep but otherwise calm. “I’m with her.”

The Commish looks from one to the other, but he’s a patient man and perceptive, and he says nothing.

*********

The first time they went to bed together, Jason was unpractised, mostly untaught and eager to learn. Sometimes it seemed to surprise him when her touch brought him genuine pleasure. God knew it surprised Helena, who’d managed to forget she’d ever had sex in her life since coming here.

That was a while ago. Kind of a really long while, actually.

But these mornings are still the most difficult: pressed together skin to skin and half asleep, no secrets, no weapons, nothing to do but trust, or leave.

They’ve covered the whole not-leaving thing already.

*********

One day Helena comes home and finds her brother in her living room. She thinks she might pass out, because he’s breathing, and his face is not smeared with blood and tears, and the skin is not flayed off his hands, and his dead still heart is not lying hacked to pieces on the floor of the nursery he and his wife created for their daughter.

“So you’re Jason’s H,” he says, smiling.

She nods. She’s shaking. He sees, of course: he’s Dick Grayson. He beame Nightwing, here; he’s Batman now.

He’s (always been) Robin.

“Damian told me all of it,” he says gently. “In his defence, he had a fever Tuesday and Wednesday and tends to talk in his sleep when he’s a little doped.”

Helena can’t answer.

“Shall I leave?”

“Yes,” she bursts out. But her brother’s smile disappears, and then he turns her brother’s face away from her, and the blood is back, and she blurts, “Come back?” like she’s forgotten how to speak in grammatically correct sentences, but that’s a worry for another time: when her brother isn’t kissing her forehead the way he used to when she was a baby, and isn’t telling her he would be honoured to be invited back, telling her she’s always welcome at his home.

She cries all evening like an idiot little girl: great heaving sobs that leave her near-unable to draw breath at all. Jase turns up when she’s about an hour into the first and worst crying jag she’ll ever have in her life, and amazingly he knows exactly how to hold her and how to rub his big warm hand across her back and what to say and when to kiss her sweaty temples, her swollen eyelids. She’s never felt his touch so gentle.

It’s no wonder they trust him, out on the streets.

*********

A blonde in a Gotham Knights shirt and a pair of green jeans turns up in her kitchen a week later; H _hopes_ the paper bag contains bagels. 

“Girl Robins gotta stick together,” she says. “I’m Steph. Batgirl.”

“A mass-produced knock-off only,” says Damian, stamping in after her. “Todd’s not here, is he? Cain says she can’t make it before eleven.”

“I have a migraine coming on,” Helena mutters.

No one listens.

*********

Jase takes her to his grave once. It’s a hideous thing, all weeping angels and ornate marble.

“It suits you,” says H sweetly.

“Screw off,” he says, laughing. Takes a breath; holds it as the seconds tick past. Lets it out in a long sigh.

“Pass the test?” says Helena.

“I think maybe we did,” he says.

“Your stunning philosophical insights never fail to excite me, you know.”

Jason looks at her sidelong. “Is that excite intellectually, or more along the lines of ‘really turns you on’?”

“I’m not making out with you in front of your own headstone,” says Helena, grins. “That’s obscene.”

*********

Helena lights candles in Divinity Church for remembrance – six, as there are six Robins; that makes her shake her head.

Mom, Dad, Alfred. Dick, Babs, Dinah.

She watches them in silence for rather too long; then, shaking herself out of a trance, she turns to go, turns back, lights another for herself, for the girl she left behind in the other world, the world that’s home no longer.

It was cloudy when she arrived at the church, threatening an uncomfortable spring drizzle. When she comes back out, Gotham welcomes her with a bloody cloudburst.


End file.
